The present invention concerns generally sheath knives of the type lockable within a sheath.
To avoid accidental separation of a knife from its sheath it is common practice to provide a lock or a latch which requires manipulation for knife removal.
Existing latches or locks are not always of a design which renders a knife readily removable from its sheath i.e., compatible with normal finger and hand movement, but rather require awkward manual efforts. Further, some prior art locks for retaining a knife in a sheath undesirably add significant cost to knife manufacture. For example, in the prior art are knives which include spiral springs, pivot pins, push buttons lock components all of which contribute to knife cost of manufacture by reason of additional machining and assembly effort. In the prior art are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,856,192; 4,558,516; 4,854,044; 2,391,574; 2,901,823; 2,793,434 and 1,237,075 each of which include some of the above noted lock components.